Progesterone receptor status and tumor size as possible indicators of axillary lymph node involvement in T1 carcinoma of the breast

Disagreement persists on the necessity of axillary lymph node dissection for small T1 stage unilateral breast cancers. In this study of 120 women with T1 primary tumors who underwent extensive dissection, better definition of pathological factors that can predict axillary node metastases might have spared 88 (73.3%) who were node negative. We assessed age, tumor size, histology, grade and hormone receptor status as possible indicators of lymph node involvement. As expected, tumor size was a strong predictor of the likelihood of node involvement (p=0.026 in univariate and p=0.0024 in multivariate analyses). Progesterone receptor status also correlated significantly (p=0.0008 in univariate and p=0.017 in multivariate analyses) with axillary positivity. Tumor grade was found to be significant (p=0.018) only in univariate analysis. These findings contribute to the ongoing search for confident selection of subgroups of patients who will undergo lumpectomy but can safely be spared axillary node dissection.